Monday, August 28, 2017

Is Orthodox Judaism compatible with biblical criticism? At first
glance this question seems absurd since Bible critics generally claim
that the Pentateuch is a historically inaccurate, incoherent work
composed of multiple sources that changed over time. But in academic
biblical studies there are lesser-known conservative scholars who
question these assumptions, arguing that the Pentateuch is more unified,
coherent, historically accurate, and ancient than most critics contend.

In his recent essay “The Corruption of Biblical Studies,”
Joshua Berman argues that there is an endemic bias in academic Bible
studies against these conservative scholars whose work is automatically
dismissed as not rigorous and “agenda-driven,” no matter the evidence.
In a response to Berman, Marc Brettler connects
a conservative approach to Bible scholarship with Orthodoxy writing
that “it is not surprising that an Orthodox Jew like Berman would resist
it [source criticism].” It would seem that Orthodox Judaism is
compatible with critical Bible study, if it is undertaken in a
conservative manner. But looking at the roots of Orthodox and
Conservative Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany, it becomes clear
that matters are much more complicated.

Orthodoxy versus Conservative Judaism in Germany

In
1845, Reform rabbis held a rabbinical conference in Frankfurt. The
attendees included Rabbi Zacharias Frankel, a self-described “moderate
reformer.” But when Frankel saw the reforms being adopted at the
conference as too radical, he walked out. Frankel’s action galvanized
like-minded Jewish religious conservatives and a year later Frankel
sought to organize a conference to solidify this group.

In 1859, Frankel presented the theory behind his theological approach in his book Darkhei Ha-mishnah,
a methodological introduction to the Mishnah. Frankel regarded himself
as propounding a conservative approach to Jewish law. While many Jewish
reformers claimed that historical criticism demonstrated that the
ancient rabbis invented new laws that they then read into the Bible
through fanciful interpretations, Frankel used historical scholarship to
argue for the antiquity of many mishnaic laws. The Mishnah was composed
in the third century CE, but Frankel argued that many of its laws were
substantially older going back at least six hundred years to the times
of Ezra. Frankel defined his ideological orientation as
“Positive-Historical” Judaism and headed the first modern rabbinical
seminary in Germany, the Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar in
Breslau. Frankel’s seminary sought to serve all German Jews, training
rabbis that would serve in both Orthodox and Reform communities. It is
not incidental that when Conservative Judaism emerged in America it
originated in a break with Reform, called its flagship institution the Jewish Theological Seminary, and sought to train rabbis that would serve in all Jewish communities.

Rabbi
Samson Raphael Hirsch was the intellectual founder and leading figure
of German Neo-Orthodoxy. In light of his staunch opposition to Reform
Judaism, Hirsch’s contemporaries assumed that he would regard Frankel as
an ally. But when Frankel published Darkhei Ha-mishnah, Hirsch
harshly criticized it. At the core of Hirsch’s argument was his
contention that the gap between Frankel’s conservatism and Reform was
relatively minor compared to the gap between Frankel’s position and
Orthodoxy. Hirsch explained that Orthodoxy was premised on the idea that
God revealed the entire Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai along with
the Written Torah (the Bible). While Frankel had argued on historical
grounds that many rabbinic laws were centuries older than the Mishnah,
Hirsch argued that this position remained completely at odds with
Orthodoxy.

Old was not enough. Even if rabbinic laws went back to
Ezra’s time or earlier, they were still composed hundreds of years after
Moses. Hirsch further showed that Frankel’s approach was grounded in
the assumption that the early scribes (soferim) had created the
Oral Law in a specific historical context that shaped its teachings.
This opened the door to arguing that the Torah’s laws should be adjusted
to fit contemporary circumstances. But for Hirsch Orthodoxy assumed
that the Oral Law was revealed to Moses by a timeless God and was
eternally valid.

While Hirsch attacked Frankel’s view of the Oral
Law, we can easily apply his arguments to the Bible. While conservative
Bible critics argue that biblical texts are much older, more coherent,
and more historically accurate than scholars commonly assume, there
remains an unbridgeable gap between these “conservative” claims and the
Orthodox view that God dictated the entire Bible to Moses, which was
preserved uncorrupted. As Hirsch never tired of pointing out, the
problem for Orthodoxy is not with the specific conclusions of a
historian, but with the historical method itself. The underlying
assumption of the historical method is naturalism, namely the belief
that texts are created by human beings in response to shifting
historical circumstances. By contrast, Orthodoxy rests on the belief
that the Torah is the product of supernatural revelation and eternally
valid. Hirsch was not the first to recognize the chasm separating
Orthodox belief about the Bible from historical criticism. Spinoza
understood it nearly two centuries before him.

Spinoza’s Clarity about the Premises of Biblical Scholarship

Berman
correctly identifies Spinoza as a founder of critical biblical study.
But he does not give him sufficient credit when he claims that before
Newton nature was presumed to be impenetrable and Newton’s discovery
that nature operates according to precise laws gave a decisive impetus
to biblical criticism. Spinoza clearly held a view of science similar to
Newton’s in vital respects. This is evident from his posthumously
published Ethics, where he describes nature as operating
according to universal laws of “motion and rest” and human thoughts and
emotions as arising according to a necessary, causal order that can be
determined. In his 1670 Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza
compares the study of the Bible to the study of nature writing that
“the method of interpreting Scripture does not differ at all from the
method of interpreting nature, but agrees with it completely.” The only
reason Spinoza asserted that the meaning of certain words in the Bible
or the authorship of certain books could not be definitively established
was because he thought there was insufficient evidence. Spinoza never
doubted that historical study could be a precise science.

Standing
at the boundary between the medieval and modern worlds, Spinoza
understood that naturalism was the core assumption of the historical
method.

For this reason, the most important chapter of the Theological-Political Treatise
is chapter six which treats miracles. In this remarkable chapter,
Spinoza seeks to convince the religious believer that miracles are not
possible. He argues that God’s nature is incompatible with miracles and
that the Bible itself deems miracles impossible. The reason
Spinoza makes these astonishing claims is because he recognizes that a
religious believer confronted by a scholar analyzing the Bible using a
historical-critical method could simply deny that the Bible arose
through natural causes pointing to the Bible itself as evidence of its
miraculous origin. Spinoza understood that in this case historical
criticism could not disturb the religious believer’s conviction. He
therefore argues that God’s nature and the Bible itself preclude the
possibility of miracles for in that case a historical approach is the
only valid method for discerning the Bible’s meaning and compositional
history.

For Hirsch (as for Spinoza), Orthodoxy and historical
scholarship rest on mutually exclusive, utterly irreconcilable premises.
Historical scholarship assumes that history unfolds according to
natural processes and that all literature is generated by human actors
operating within specific historical contexts. When problems such as
contradictions, gaps, repetitions, etc. occur in the biblical text, the
scholar explains them as the result of errors, multiple sources,
competing agendas, etc. By contrast, Orthodox Judaism rests on the
assumption that the Torah is a unique, perfect text miraculously
dictated by God to Moses. The Bible’s contradictions, repetitions, and
gaps show that it is not a straightforward text, but rather a
hieroglyphic work consisting of multiple levels of meaning that must be
deciphered.

Orthodoxy’s Scholarly Precedence Over Academic Bible Study

While
Hirsch sees historical scholarship and Orthodox Judaism as mutually
exclusive, he claims that in an important respect, Orthodox Judaism
approaches the academic ideal of historical accuracy better than
scholarship itself. Historical scholarship seeks to understand texts as
they were originally intended. While scholarship’s interest is purely
theoretical, focused on understanding the Bible as one phenomenon within
history, Orthodox Judaism seeks to understand the Bible for a practical
purpose, namely as a guide to life. Given that the Bible presents
itself as addressing the reader with divine commandments to govern a
person’s life, Hirsch sees Orthodox Judaism’s approach to the Bible as
coming closer to the scholarly ideal of understanding texts as they were
originally intended.

Hirsch’s Assault on Orthodox Confusion

Hirsch
recognized that some Orthodox scholars of his day thought that one
could apply a historical method to the Torah. For Hirsch, this betrayed a
lack of clarity about the theological principles upon which Orthodox
Judaism depends. In 1873, Hirsch warned the scholar and staunch defender
of Orthodoxy Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann not to publish his dissertation
“Mar Samuel: The Life of a Talmudic Sage.” Hirsch objected that
Hoffmann’s use of academic methods had led him to positions
irreconcilable with Orthodox Judaism, such as that the Mishnah and
Talmud introduced new laws in response to changing historical
circumstances and that certain halakhic decisions derived from Mar
Samuel’s “humanitarian” personality traits. For Hirsch, Hoffmann
unwittingly undermined the eternal validity of the Oral Law by
historicizing it.

From the Hirschian perspective, Berman’s
criticizing Bible scholars for having a liberal bias misses the point.
The problem is not liberal bias, but the very fact of applying the
historical method to the Torah. While conservative Bible scholarship may
sound close to Orthodoxy, it operates on the basis of the same
naturalistic presuppositions employed by liberal scholars and so ends up
undermining the eternal validity of the Torah. The point is not whether
scholars with impeccable Orthodox credentials have engaged in Biblical
criticism. Clearly they have. The point is Hirsch’s contention that an
Orthodox Jew engaged in biblical criticism is knotted in impossible
self-contradiction.

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